To be fair to Darkfall most of the drama surrounding this game came from people who never had any intention of playing it. Darkfall bashing was quite the sport for a while. I don’t know why a niche game that is designed to appeal to a small hardcore aroused so much vitriol among more mainstream mmorpg gamers. Its almost as if the WoW contingent felt threatened by the very existence of Darkfall.

It’s probably something to do with members of the Darkfall hardcore insulting anyone who dared criticise the game, whether the criticism was legitimate or not. People don’t react too fondly to being called a newb/retard/carebear/whatever just for stating that they don’t like a game.

@Bigjonno: well, that could be said of almost every mmo community around, save lotro maybe but it’s a den of pacifists. Take EvE for example, many mature players, yet more often than not interactions between pvpers ends up in forum fights. It’s kind of a metagame.

Darkfall isn’t spared of course, but it’s no more guilty than that. And there’s a silent majority of regular, cool guys on the game, like everywhere.

I recall Kieron saying in his re-review that everyone he met while playing Darkfall was thoroughly amiable.

Funnily enough, I’m working on a feature at the moment which has involved interviewing some Darkfall players. Almost exclusively, the people I spoke to said they understood the uproar regarding the original EG review, and were unhappy with it themselves, but were at pains to point out that those declaring war and being utterly obnoxious were not representative of the community as a whole.

Oh yeah, every game has a cringe-inducing vocal minority. It’s just that in Darkfall’s case it takes the form of an inherent sense of superiority and that if someone dislikes the game, it’s due to a failing on their part. The Heroes of Newerth kerfuffle over at Resolution showed the same mentality.

Yes, every game has assholes in it. However, the whole drama showed that Darkfall has truly hateful and spiteful people. Didn’t they track down the original reviewer’s address and start threatening him on the phone? There’s trash talk and then there’s this… behaviour which should get a person thrown into jail or an asylum. These are the people playing Darkfall.

Dude, you’d be really surprised of the length the EvE players can go as far as IRL acts for ingame reasons go. And nobody’s making a big deal of it nor does it drive away players from the game.

There are always extremists, morons, etc. as long as you got a bunch of people put together, especially on the Internet. This is how it goes, and imho this is calumny to put the blame on DF player community more than others.

This is actually the vibe I get from the Star Trek Online community, which I simply cannot get over, and it’s so different than the Champions Online community that it amazes me. It’s probably because of the Trek fans, a term which seems mutually inclusive of peace-loving hippie. But aside from the odd jerk there it’s actually amazing, and it seems to have drawn over some of the genuinely good people from Champions Online, too. Such as Chat. I’m a huge fan of Chat.

What gets me sometimes though is when people bring up risky topics, and then… no one explodes, people are generally supportive, nice, well-mannered, and amazing. As an example, since it means something to me, the furry threads are mind-bogglingly alien. Why? No teenagers (who were clearly dropped on their heads too many times as a child) yelling ‘furfag’ at something they didn’t understand. At least from my observations.

What magical quality makes the communities of Lord of the Rings and Star Trek Online like that? Is it the geekery? Is it that the lore promotes equality and open-mindedness (Federation for Trek, Free Peoples for Tolkien)? Is it because most annoying jerks thing that scenes like LOTRO and Star Trek are only for ‘ghey’ people, and that it would hurt their ManBalls™ credentials just by being present? (This last one is worryingly probable.) That could be all of it, combined.

In which case, I petition every MMO from this day forward to put forward in their lore that the races the character plays are in a very ‘carebear’ relationship of equality, open-mindedness, respect, understanding, and fun.

My main worry with Guild Wars 2 is that the community is going to be a bit shit (or a lot shit) because of the uneasiness of the allied forces. The promise of “WAAARLOL” might bring in all the wrong people, which means that I can’t really see myself interacting with a single other sapient creature that I hadn’t met outside of the game previously. That can’t be healthy for an MMO, though, and it would be nice if it didn’t have to be that way.

I’d love to take the community of something like Star Trek Online, and smoosh it in with the gameplay of Champions Online or Guild Wars 2, because community is very important to me, but most are atrocities of human existence.

I played the game, and actually, the worst thing about it was the community. At the time I played, no one used the vehicles (sea ships and land ships) because speedhackers could steal them right out from under you. I didn’t expect this ever to be fixed due to the client-sided nature of the player movements.

The majority of players used exploits, such as AFKing for long periods of time with their run-key jammed down, humping a wall to raise their attributes while other players used them as target dummies (resulting in further stat raises for both attacker and attackee).

If you did try to advance in a more honest manner, as in by actually playing the game, you would firstly be stymied by the packs of players who had already finished the grind and would kill you for fun. That’s not entirely unavoidable, however, as you could perhaps find a quiet or well-defended spot so you’re only getting ganked every hour or so instead of constantly. However, you could not avoid the fact that the developers seemed to EXPECT you to hump a wall for several days straight in order to raise your stats, because that’s how bad the grind is!

Getting ganked at random is part of the fun of an anything-goes MMORPG, but I don’t think a long grind works for a PvP-centric game at all. Personally, I despise any PvP game where the power levels of different players can be dramatically different. I don’t WANT to win because I spent more time grinding, I want to win because I’ve gained real mastery of how to play.

even WoW is a torrent now. now, most larger-budget games have a fancy little torrent wrapper .exe program (which annoys me no end, as i’ve already got utorrent, two torrent clients running at the same time does un-lovely things to my line…).

at least darkfall (a year ago, at least) allowed me to load and download it like a normal torrent, without sneaky bits. (a lot of the F2P MMOs set their torrent .exe to keep running well after you’ve seeded 100%. that’s my bandwidth, thanks…)

Torrent itself is nothing sleazy, it is a technology – and if you are interested into that, it is a real cool one.
A well thought through elegant solution superior to other wideley used file transfer technologies. I really like torrents, as a user and as a technophile, and have to restrain myself hard from recounting all the reasons why it is to great.
But short: I think it should be the default transmission method – if you have the ressources to put up an FTP or HTTP fileserver you could also setup a mighty webseed…. argh enough!

I suggest trying out the game in a month or so from now. There’s a patch and an “expansion” (AV’s overflated word for a bigger patch) coming along that should be ready and up by that time. The biggest problems for the game right now are it’s pretty low population (that trial can probably fix that to an extent), horrible grind (which should be redeemed somewhat by a couple of HP forumula changes, tightening the gap between noobs and vets), and the fact that it’s unbalanced as hell (magic is the dominant style of play for that reason).

Other than that, don’t mind the shat reviews or whatnot. Mark my word: in a couple of years more and more games will follow the MMOFPS/RPG route DF has carved. The gameplay is truly special, and I myself, have found it impossible to like and play any target based MMO after playing Darkfall. It may seem like I’m being a fanboy (even though I don’t have a running sub right now), but the fact is there are numerous things DF allows that you can only dream of in any other game in the market (massive sieges, dynamic pvp, true territorial control) that isn’t a space MMO and has a boring gameplay.

That’s understandable. MMO’s are generally underdeveloped compared to other games. All the Planetsides, Darkfalls, Mortals, Global Agendas, and etc lack one thing or another. One can have perfect combat mechanics and balance, but lack sandbox features, which effectively turns it into nothing more than a glorified arena. Another has a perfect seamless world and can successfully allow for massive battles with minimum lag, but the game itself finds it hard to appeal to enough people for said massive battles. A third might be awesome on both combat mechanics and massive battles, but it’ll be all instanced, which brakes imerssion.

With the pace MMO’s are being developed these days, more and more tastes are being cattered to – people hated the space thing in EVE, so here we have Perpetuum, which is basically EVE on the ground. If DF did one thing right, it was to demonstrate that the “niche” for it isn’t just a niche, it’s a whole lot bunch of people. It’ll only take for a competent developer to figure that out, get some cash flowing and create a game that has the perfect balance of sandbox features, non-grindiness, seamlesness, dynamic gameplay, and combat balance. Hopefully in the next few years we’ll see someone doing it.

I really wouldn’t include planetside when talking about MMORPGFPSes. It was an MMOFPS, but didn’t have any real pretentions beyond that. Same with Global Agenda, although this new patch seems to be making it more conventional MMORPG-ish.

I was thinking more Darkfall, Mortal (forgot that one), Neocron (2001 beta, 2002 launch, still running), Tabula Rasa, Fallen Earth. Now of course, one of the downsides to all of those listed is that I think only Darkfall had what we’d consider a “true” FPS system, the others offering something more akin to an FPS-abstraction layer over a more conventional MMO.

But yes, my point is that there are a bunch of people out there who’d like an MMORPGFPS. Unfortuantley they aren’t a huge group and then they split further, between those who want an EVE-esque anything-goes world, to those who want something more structured and friendlier. Maybe one day we’ll see an MMOFPSRPG with both the funding needed and the vision to make it good.
I long since stopped holding my breath though.

Oh, also, I just fucking hate it how half the internet seems to be taking DF as some sort of a funny joke, talking only about its downfalls, oddities, and basically showing some ridiculous elitism regarding it, as if it’s something people should ignore at best, maybe have a laugh at the expense of every now and then.

Example: the edit where you just put up a video of the greatest retard ever to have spawned in DF as if it’s the one thing you can show for it. Fuck, I don’t remember seeing your freaking fanboy site doing the same for WAR or Global Agenda, or any of the other games you pick to fanboy around and report about only every other day. Biased much?

Hell, it’s not like there aren’t a shitton of videos showing different aspects of DF, from the numerous ways you can use the physics of the game to the epic siege movies, all throught the more casual small-scale PvP romps. No, you chose to put up the video you did, because you think it’s sooo freaking funny to make an intruduction of the game by plastering that idiot here. Great going RPS. I kinda had some respect for you, despite your habit to gravitate only around certain games/companies, while completely ignoring others, as if they don’t exist.

Not a darkfall player but tried it half a year ago, find the video funny but I kinda agree with the guy. It’s a trend in the mmo world to take DF as a joke, and that’s kinda beating on the dead horse imo ^^

Also, while DF has flaws, it’s not really fair towards the individuals that form the community to present this dude as an example of player. DF got its share of morons, alike any mmo, but there are still very good guys too :)

Talking about DF is good for the game and I’m sure they’re thankful, but I’m not speaking about the game (I still think it deserves to be criticized, see below), I’m just saying the reputation its community seems to have isn’t justified, as its not worst nor better than any other around, and the video isn’t really helping on that question :)

@bmfof If there are better, more representative videos you’d like to see here why not link some and take the posted video in good humour? If you took that approach theres a good chance rps would link to them. Taking the approach you did was utterly pointless.

I have to admit though, the tone of the post was perhaps inviting responces like this, just a tad.

DF concept could work, but it’s suffering from a lot of flaws. There’s not enough sand in it to make it a sandbox, and the devs do not want to take the needed decisions to make the game more solid on this aspect.

They’ve promised features that were pure vaporware and are holding to some bad concepts that they used at a point to justifiy not holding to their word, and are therefore reluctant to dump them. It’s a pity really because if they had took the core concept of UO and improved from there it could have worked very well.
Instead of that they’re still struggling with the core gameplay several years and a massive loss of player after release.

Unfortunately, I don’t think we’re going to see the glory days of UO replicated any time soon. UO was open and sandboxy, but it attracted a wide variety of players. All the recent attempts at doing something similar have been too focussed on the PvP aspect, which tends to attract people who want to “gank newbs” who then drive off, well, everyone else, even if they’re only a minority of the actual player base.

I agree with you, however I’m still convinced that it’s just a matter of luck and the right concept meeting the right team. The more I see MMOs rise and fall, the more I think it’s not a matter of who got the biggest funds or marketing or whatever, it’s just to have smart, skilled guys on command.

Take SWG for example (where PvP/PKing was not really an issue), huge funds, huge franchise and a really good concept at the start, with clever guys (they did have some people coming from the original UO team iirc) on the dev team.

Bad management enter the stage and bam, RIP good ‘ole SWG concept.

The closest thing we got actually to UO is EvE, and it’s fantastically managed. It’s no coincidence if the game went from invisible to hype imho. MMO times are a-changing and I think player feedback is one of the core element of the next mmo era.
Every modern MMO willing to come close to a sandbox environment should have a test server and actively use it. Sandbox are little ecosystems, you can’t balance an ecosystem without empirical data.

I think the moral of this story is that if an MMORPG has a PvP focus–as opposed to PvP being tacked on and the devs making it clear that it’s secondary (however slightly) to the PvE experience–then you’re going to have a game staffed by hardcore ‘veterans’ which is going to be impenetrable to the average player. This is how I feel about EvE, Darkfall, Mortal, and various, similar games.

Ultima Online was a success because the development phase went something like this:

– Beta, only PvE exists, a lot of happy, sociable people are present.
– A vocal minority stats bitching about the lack of competitive player activities.
– They go on and on about it.
– And on.
– And on.
– The devs, sick of hearing it, throw them a bone by including PvP aspects to see how it goes.
– The game starts haemorrhaging PvE subscribers.
– When asked why, they don’t feel it’s the sociable, fun game it once was.
– Origin have an “OHSHIT!” moment and create Trammel, a server shard where PvP is impossible.
– The population on the PvP shard drops, the PvE one grows.
– PvP players bitch.
– Origin ignores them.

The moral of this story is that (in my experiences, at least) you get very few honourable, decent PvP players in an environment that mixes PvP and PvE (they should be as separate as possible, like in Guild Wars, Champions Online, Lord of the Rings Online, and so on), and they absolutely love fucking with new players, and no one else really seems to care.

Whereas on Trammel, where PvP was non-existent, if you died to a bunch of Dragons, you could actually solicit the help of a well equipped player. They’d get your stuff back, they’d give you all of it, and they wouldn’t ask for a damned thing in return. I will never forget the kindness of the average UO gamer on Trammel. I miss that.

Hey KG, you’re not doing a lot to counter the “game reviewers tend to be biased on games that aren’t to their liking”. Which you probably find normal, since that’s what reviewers generally do. The problem is that neither you, nor your lovely Zitron friend, even tried to understand what are the appeals in Darkfall. Both your reviews were a horribly written mess of bias and non-facts and just went to show how the WoW culture and style of play nurtured you. Instead of trying to see what DF was about you went and made a lolsie story about griefing in FFA PvP, about how horrible looting is in a game about looting, and how the UI is horrible in a game that is miles away from any of the other MMO’s you seem to think are the norm (when a different UI is simply REQUIRED in a different type of game, which is kinda obvious, huh?).
I probably have played just as much games as you, or at least enough MMO’s to have a good enough grasp on the genre and its sub-genres. I know what constitutes some design decisions in them and I won’t go blame WoW for having a fucking boring PvE or for being instanced, simply because I know that’s the type of game it is. If you ask me to score it I’ll give it 1 out of 10, because I think it’s shit and it has no appeal to me. But I won’t go write a review about it, because I’d know outright that I hate WoW.
Which is why I’m baffled as to why you, or Zitron, or any of the folks at EG had the idea of even reviewing Darkfall, when it was obvious it didn’t appeal to any of you? I mean, just by the way you write it’s obvious you had no intention of actually liking the game, or even playing it to the point where it’s truly engaging – the point where you take part in politics, intrigue, a sort of a meta-roleplaying, if you wish. The point where you’ve learned to twitch-play well enough to use that in PvP and take note of the dynamics in it. Or any of the milestones in the game where you go in a naval battle with one or many of 10+ ships in the game, land battle with the 4 warhulks, or even simple small siege (~50 people in each side) with even odds.
Hell, you didn’t bother to explore the fact that DF is probably the one and only MMO on the market TO DATE that has successfully implamented mounted combat without any rubber-banding, or frame-jumping, or whatever. Or that it’s the only game that is able to provide massive player battles with more than 300 people in one zone AT ONCE, without almost any lag or frameloss (provided you have the PC for it, the requirements for which are significantly lower than those of any title bar WoW right now). You also completely missed the fact that the whole world is completely hand-crafted and it’s probably one of the better MMO worlds on the market as well, with numerous underground caverns, secret underwater cities, and even whole hamlets hidden in massive caves. I can probably go on for a small essay here, about everything you accidentally or purposely forgot.

But here you are, about a year later – reeking of the same bias and ignorance like in the past. Instead of trying to see (and show through this here post) what’s good about the game you go and show some random “funny” excerpt of one moron. Why do you guys even try? Do you really think you’re doing a service to the game that way? You think you’re maybe helping somewhat?
No, you’re not. You’re just adding to the misleading trend that DF is the epitome of shitty game design, that its sole existence is a joke with the universe, its fans – a retarded mass of meat that can’t go beyond its capacity to make silly video commentaries. Hooray for video game journalism at its fines, RPS – its most loyal and firm defenders!

Perhaps take a cup of tea and read this topic again once the red mists have gone? I’m sure the authors never wanted to hurt you or stab your game whilst it was gently sleeping. Plus, you can review something you’re not in love with. It’s called being objective.

The Darkfall Inquisition! Their chief weapon is defensiveness…defensiveness and passive-aggressive messagebaord posts…. their two weapons are defensiveness and passive-aggressive messagebaord posts…and a complete lack of humour…. their *three* weapons are defensiveness and passive-aggressive messagebaord posts, and a complete lack of humour…and an almost fanatical devotion to Darkfall…. their *four*…no… *Amongst* their weapons…. Amongst their weaponry…are such elements as defensiveness and passive-aggressive messagebaord posts…. I’ll come in again.

This isn’t a Darkfall inquisition, it’s just that it seems the wound is still kinda fresh for some guys playing DF. Obivously, when Kieron goes poking at it it can raise some complains. I’m not judging KG btw, merely giving an opinion.

That said bmfof, you also have to understand that everyone is entitled to its own point of view, and that it’s really hard to review an MMO. Myself I even think MMOs shouldn’t be reviewed, as it’s really tricky genre especially for those who put long-term goals above all. If you don’t play enough you’ll miss the point, and if you play for years you’ll obviously be biaised. But that’s another matter.

I also undestand that DF players think the main problem of the game is its low population, which is true, and are therefore more prone to be a bit uncomfortable with journalists making jokes upon them. That said, DF low population is the product of a bad management and, while bad press might not help, it can’t be held responsible.
Take EvE for example, for years it stayed as the underdog, even being despised by some. When I talked about EvE the reactions were going from “huh ?” to an unfeigned horror, asking me how I could be playing this. But it sticked and now it’s “the shit” everyone is applauding.

Hypocritical ? maybe, but it’s human.

Critics should not be held responsible for the failure of a game. A good, well managed game will always stick, one way or another. DF has good ideas but a terrible management, look that way if you’re looking for a scapegoat.

bmfof: You’re throwing around a lot of things which simply aren’t true of my review: I certainly wasn’t down on the looting – just the looting UI. I even praised being ganked.

There are no significant factual errors in the review. Having followed the debates after my review, the only actual thing approaching a factual error in it was claiming that whether you have a weapon or not drawn being a thing of gnomic mystery. When, in fact, as well as the text window – which I spotted – there’s a small highlight around your hotkey with it. The tiny little hotkeys with tiny little icons on, way over to the left.

Frankly, in the middle of any form of combat, that’s still gnomic mystery compared to the sensible thing of *having the weapon you have drawn in front of you at all times*.

Yes, I didn’t get to the “good stuff”. But I never tried to hide any of that, reference it and say what people like about it. Which I never experienced it, due to it being buried deep into the game.

And you know – when a game has such a rubbish start, it tends to have trouble picking up players. Which is why you’re angry and feel threatened with anyone showing anything less than total respect to a game you clearly love. You’d rather blame reviewers creating a bad reputation than face the reason why reviewers helped shape that bad reputation.

I actually wish it well – as I said in the review, I’d love for it all to come together. Maybe it has by now.

(And our first response to hearing it had gone for a trial was to hit them up for an interview. It seems a good time to do one, if they’re interested.)

I tried it myself just after the first review of it came out, and I thought it was awful too. The fact being you can climb practically any wall just by running up it, and that there’s THREE UI modes. One to loot, one to move, and one for combat. Why are these all different? Since it already takes time to loot things why not just lengthen the timer rather than make me unable to move while in loot mode?

It’s probably the worst design I’ve ever seen and I have a few friends that are architects. Take that as you will.

Saw enormous wall of text with no clear paragraphs, didn’t bother reading. I follow this policy with pretty much all forums. If you’re incompetent enough to produce such a shockingly formatted and lengthy comment you probably haven’t got anything important/sane to say.

Imagine a single player game. Characters are stupid, aggressive, incoherent, badly dressed and use the most horrid English possible. Some are actually nicely done, have good fashion taste and can speak using proper sentences. But most are just badly designed and their AI really is a mess.

The game sucks. Well it’s the same with MMOs and their communities. MMOs suck. Bling!

However most of those critics can be used to qualify your lambda RL community (except for the interface, although anyone who ever set foot in an india car could concur). Sadly, as MMOs audience grow larger, their communities are just a sample of your regular neighborood.

I agree. But what saddens me about what otherwise could be a great game concept (MMOs), is that in-game players tend to exaggerate the worst in social behavior. People just don’t behave like that around your neighborhood (with due exceptions). There’s more constraint.

Not that there is anything that can be done about that. It’s just a sad side-effect to massively online games that completely draws me away from them.

Yeah I see what you mean. Myself, having dabbled a bit in comportemental psychology back in the day, tend to think it has much to do with the poorness of the Internet media as far as non verbal communication and proxemics goes.

I’m not saying that I ain’t pessimistic regarding global nowaday civism and empathy of the occidental citizen nor am I excusing extremist behavior, but I’m convinced it’s for something in the “Internet stupidity syndrome” we tend to witness more and more these days.

I just googled it and their forums had the answer – turns out the guy he was challenging had already left the game at that point and was competing in tournaments in Demigod, so didn’t even know or care it was on.

Made a big ass post, I wonder if I can’t post it because it’s so big ass. Let’s see.

@Coins: KG’s review was everything but objective. It didn’t even scratch on many of DF’s features, instead ignoring them for the sake of rushing out a review, that ended up almost as factually innacurate as the first one. Again, I simply cannot understand why EG decided that they needed to have a review of DF on their site. The only reason I can think of is that they needed their monthly “joke” review of a game, you know.. the ones that usually get a score under 5, and the review itself is always full of funny jokoes and OH-SNAP lines about how attrocious the game is.
The problem is, DF isn’t a joke game, nor it’s attrocious. In fact, it’s pretty damn good, which makes KG’s attempt all the more embarrasing. You can think of all the uproar back then as a display of fanboism, but the truth is, if you and a shitton of other people like a game, you’d be a bit surprised if it gets all bad reviews, bad lip service, and bad rep, especially when you damn well know it’s undeserved (that is, if you have the capacity to view it objectively). In the case of DF’s community, people got pissed, because it’s a hardcore crowd, a crowd that has no games to play, because most are theme-park WoW-clones. Of course they’ll get pissed when the only game under the sun that catters to them is being bashed, highly subjectively, by a major gaming website. Because that leads to the game getting less subs, which means less money for AV, which means no more DF after a while.
I, for one, have been reading RPS long before DF was released, and for a time regarded the staff here to be at least somewhat objective. All the Valve and Mythic lip-service kinda pissed me off, but I was still a fan. That idea faded the instant I read KG is about to review DF. Because it was obvious, right there and then, that a half-assed review is going to come out of it. A review for the sake of review, not one aiming at objectivity, but instead at rubbing the idea that people already had about the game. Obviously MMO’s have to be reviewed differently, but, for fuck’s sake, a game is perfectly successable to at least a partial analysis. KG’s review lacked analysis, and I find it even more insulting he decided to put up a ridiculous story, instead of sticking to a proffesional review. It’s all shits and giggles when you’re on the sideline and don’t care about the game in question, but I can safely say that both he and Zitron were so fucking wrong about so many aspects of the game in their reviews that it’s just sad to call that journalism. It’s more like blogging, honestly. One might argue that the review itself was a joke, but how fucking fun do you think the joke was on the people whose livelihood was hurt by it? I bet they had a laugh when some brit douch who’s a grade-A WoW fanboi came in the game, spent 40 fucking minutes in the character generator, another hour in the game, and eventually came to the sure conclusion that, yes, the game is just like they paint it on the WoW forums – trash. And, oh, that horrible, horrible full loot! No, don’t mind the fact that he coudn’t even be bothered to learn how to place his weapon on the hotbar, an action that required a whooping 10 seconds for me to figure out the first time I launched the game. Don’t mind the factual errors in both reviews FOR A MAJOR GAMING WEBSITE. Don’t mind the retard in the video RPS decided to showcase here as if there aren’t hundreds of PvP vids on youtube they could’ve placed instead. It’s all in good fun. HAHA.

Don’t get me wrong. All I want is to play a good game. I happen to like full loot, seamless worlds, unrestricted PvP, sandbox elements (not Love) and twitchy combat. Unfortunately the best game for me out there is Darkfall. I know it has many flaws, and I probably know them all far better than any of you, to the point that I simply haven’t played in almost 3 months now. But it’s all subjected to being fixed, as long as AV has the drive and cash for it. I know DF’s mechanics well enough to know it could be a marvelous game if managed correctly (and so far it has been a hit-and-miss run for Aventurine at that). The technology behind the servers is something unseen before, and, again, it is unfortunately somewhat misused.
However, for that game to be good, or for any other developer to decide to make a similar game, it has to look like it’s not going to be a freaking financial suicide. Darkfall doesn’t need sarcastic ads or people bashing it for aspects they don’t know shit about. It needs to be shown for what it is. Not only the good parts, not only the bad parts – everything. Show a PvP video and you might give a rough idea what DF’s PvP is. Show a siege video and you can tip about that. Show a retard doing a commentary and what do you accomplish? Answer this KG, oh mighty king of objective journalims – what was the purpose of posting that vid, alone, by itself? I laughed at it an year ago when it was created, but in the context of your newspost, claiming to be promoting the game, how is this particular video helping the game, or even showing it for what it is?
But, fuck, do you honestly think that what you or EG are doing is helping the game, of all things? Do you honestly think that providing a FACTUALLY INNACURATE review in a major gaming site is helping the game? Or that what is happening here right now is good – slapping a sarcastic text, along with a ridiculous video painting the game as a full of retards venture? How many people do you think will even bother trying the trial? How many will stick with it after you linked to your own FACTUALLY INNACURATE review?
And don’t tell me it’s not obvious you’re basically setting the mood with what you write, because that’s exactly what you do. Hell, you need to make a living, and if that means to slam on the MMO punch-bag that Darkfall is, sure, go ahead.
Just keep in mind that some will eventually see you for all the hypocrisy you reek of right now, especially when you decide one day to scratch the topic of bias and prejudice in game’s journalism. That’ll be FUN and HUMOROUS, HAHA.

You might benefit from spending a little time readng the reasonable responce KG has already directed at you. If anything your posts are probably more damaging to the game you’re trying to defend than what you’re rallying against.

You’ve meantoned objectivity several times, but I hate to break it to you, the writing staff aren’t the ones shouting misdirected, subjective bile here. You are.

Oh, and if that is any consolation to you LADIES, eventually I died that night with all the precious loot I accumulated during my half an hour moronathon. After a while people figured out where I am, and what am I doing, grouped up, and killed me (well, I don’t know if they actually grouped up). So fuck you, with your fake video game morals and bullshit. If there’s anything to bring people together and make them socialize and fight, that’s a red near the city, carrying phat lewtz with him.”
——-
This ring a bell?
You’re just an angsty little pest arent you?

Oh angry internet man, it’d been a while since I saw you. How have you been?

but the truth is, if you and a shitton of other people like a game, you’d be a bit surprised if it gets all bad reviews, bad lip service, and bad rep, especially when you damn well know it’s undeserved

and the next logical step after that is obviously to start throwing tantrums all over the internet and resorting to threats of violence against the reviewer yes?

It figures that a griefer would be going batshit crazy trying to defend the game. I don’t know if the game is designed to attract people with that particular breed of psychosis, but it sure does seem to.

And on a side note, the game looks pretty ugly in the video. Mounted combat is always cool though… wish more games did it well.

Dude, honestly, I see where you’re coming from, but you should take a deep breath of fresh air and only come back then. Walls of text written on the moment will not do you or your cause any good, especially when read by people who have very little knowledge on the matter.

And that’s a pity because I think you’re not totally wrong on the subject. Posting that video, which seems to be an edit by Kieron, looks indeed a clumsy move even to me who globally simply don’t care about DF and isn’t particularly touched by whatever crap can be thrown at the game.

Darkfall tells a two-pronged lesson in virtual world game design that few really get:

Yes, it’s essential that virtual worlds offer players a lot more freedom in order to seem truly virtual worldly… however, simply granting those freedoms without the appropriate checks and balances in place is just begging for the thing to fall apart in a grief-ridden trainwreck.

oh nob off Eve is a “grief ridden train wreck” and thats why people play it. DarkFall as a concept is pretty sweet but suffers from a lack of decent implementation. I played the Eve Beta and it was fucking dreadfull but here i am 6 years later still playing the bugger. All Darkfall needs is some decent project management and jobs a good’un (dont stab me Zekk) but the vitriolic defence of what is bad about the game simply serves to harm it. Random screaming at RPS wont change that.

Embrace the critics and help evolve the game, there are good ideas and bad ones. The Eve forums for example are often filled with “why isnt it more like WoW posts” that get shot down by everyone and their mother but a well constructed criticism with a good solution is generally looked upon favourably by players and devs alike.

You cannot pretend that the bad parts of the game are perfectly fine nor can you bow to every forum troll who wants WoW in a different universe. Find the balance!

Also as a CEO of a large corporation in Eve (“rps community” folks come and join us) i have to say “deal with it you pointless little man” Life is harsh and games are harsher, just cos people dont like your game doesnt give you carte blanche to spout shite about other games. Grow a pair and instead of crying about it here start recruiting RPSers into your corp/guild equivalent. Do a write up etc and prove to the RPS community that its worth their time. I’ll certainly give it a bash when i have time as im interested mainly because RPS has written about it.

@Dave, I just visited the RPSH forums hoping to lurk them (not possible, of course). However, the most used tags are visible to unregistered members. While I can’t work out anything from them, I thought I’d tell you as secrecy seems to be a big thing in EvE (and one of the coolest things about it, IMO).